Just A Flicker
by northernexposure
Summary: When did Harry first see Ruth as more than a work colleague?


Just A Flicker

Summary: When did Harry first think of Ruth as more than a colleague?

Author's note: Just finished season three. And I really loved the scene that inspired this bit of fluff. Subtext is all! A bit rushed, since I am actually supposed to be subbing pages about Alexandra Burke. Hmm...

* * *

_"I didn't know I paced, Ruth." _

_"Only... in a good way."_

* * *

It had been a tough week, what with the awful business with the laser-guided missile threat and his interview with The Powers That Be. Harry watched London by night sail past the car's window, the florescent lights of the city splashing across its leather interior and illuminating the space with frenetic pools of artificial colour. He liked these journeys home, especially after a particularly difficult operation. It was one of the rare times - possibly the only time - in his day when he had nothing to do but sit. He didn't even have to drive. It was his time to unwind, to take stock of the events that had shaped his day, to run through things he hadn't had time to properly process in the hectic hours of his working life. Harry had developed the habit of storing up these moments specifically for this 30-minute drive, so that when he arrived at his front door, he could claim the rest of the evening (whatever slim portion of it was left) as his own. His private time was rare and therefore precious, and though he had no one to share it with but his dog, Harry still preferred a clear mind to one cluttered with the day's detritus. It was the only way he got any sleep in the short hours he was able to allocate to rest.

And so it was now that he pulled out his curious encounter with Ruth, which had begun in a perfectly normal way and had concluded... well, he wasn't sure _how_ it had concluded. And given the events immediately surrounding its advent, it had become one of the moments - in fact, the only one from today - that he had filed away for future contemplation.

_"You won't forget us, will you? When you're upstairs, pacing the plush carpets of the seventh floor?"_

Ruth's question had taken him totally by surprise, and by her face, she had surprised herself, too. Ruth's fingers had fiddled with her pen, the way they did when she was nervous (he wondered, suddenly, when he had found time to learn this about her) and her gaze had flicked away as he'd watched her.

_"I didn't know I paced, Ruth."_

Why had that been his reply? He could have said, "Of course not", or "I'm sure I'll still be called upon to keep an eye on you all," or something equally neutral, appropriate and above all, true. But his surprise at her hypothetical question (and why had she found it necessary to ask at all, even hypothetically, when she knew he was not planning to get the job?) had continued, and his brain had fired in a different direction, namely to wonder why had Ruth noticed that he paced.

Pressing his shoulders into the leather upholstery, Harry shook his head and shut his eyes. His surprise had come not only from her question. That could have been thrown away, lightheartedly, by any one of his colleagues. No, it was the look on her face that had floored him. As if she actually wanted to know the answer. As if the answer was important to her. And as if she hadn't considered it to be so important until she'd found herself unexpectedly asking it.

_"Only... in a good way,"_ she'd answered, in a rush, before turning awkwardly on her heel to escape his office.

Something had flickered in the back of his mind as she fled. Something so minute and yet so significant that he'd immediately quashed it and got on with the job at hand. At the time he'd shelved the notion completely, yet Harry realised now that he'd always intended to go back to it.

He'd been looking foward to this drive home ever since she'd left his office, and this was why. He'd wanted to take out that momentary exchange, to run it back through his mind and turn it over. To consider every angle, to examine it throughly. To work out what it was about.

The flicker returned, and he acknowledged it, cautiously, before tracing it back to it's root. Ruth's question had meant something.

_"You won't forget us, will you?"_

Ruth was saying something, in her roundabout, specifically Ruth-like way, even if she hadn't realised it herself.

That she'd miss him. That was it. She was saying that she'd miss him.

And the flicker at the back of his mind, the one that was there, right now, as he thought of her saying it, was... joy.

The word sent a jolt through him, and Harry blinked. Joy? Yes, _joy_. Happiness. Pleasure. The knowledge that Ruth would miss him were he not there had caused him to feel... _happy_.

The car turned a corner at speed, and he leaned into the door, staring out into the night. The tinted glass distorted everything, but Harry wasn't really looking anyway.

Ruth would miss him. And he was happy that she would miss him.

He thought of her, later in the day, sitting at her desk, applying lipgloss (ever-appropriate, he had thought at the time, ever-understated, as only Ruth could be) as he approached to tell her he had failed to get the position. She'd seemed more composed, then, cheerful, even, having put their earlier encounter out of her mind entirely, no doubt. Perhaps whatever madness had momentarily overtaken her had immediately passed her by. Perhaps he was reading too much into it.

Though, Harry mused, he couldn't be reading too much into his own reaction. He was old enough and had been through enough wars (in all their infinite variety) to understand the workings of his own emotional make-up. Which was why, when she'd moved to leave, he'd joked about calling her back and laughed, just a little too heartily, at her good-natured rebuff. He'd wanted to reach out, not physically, but somehow. He'd wanted to regain that split second in his office when he had looked up at her and felt something at the back of his mind that he hadn't felt for years, but recognised.

The car slowed, and Harry realised he was nearing home. His house loomed ahead, large (too large, truly, for his lone self) and dark. His housekeeper would have left a meal for him. All he'd have to do was heat it up, pour himself a glass of wine, sit down and relax. Perhaps flick the television on. Perhaps read a few chapters of the Smiley he'd put down the previous evening.

Harry shut the car door, said goodnight to his driver, and took his key out of his pocket, with Ruth still on his mind. He opened his front door, greeted the dog, and put down his briefcase, with Ruth still on his mind. He shrugged of his coat, entered the kitchen, flicked on the oven and poured his wine – and still she was on his mind.

Sticking a finger beneath his tie, Harry loosened it with a sigh. "Fool," he muttered to himself.

Had it, in truth, always been there, he wondered, that flicker? It seemed to him now that it had, and if not always, then it had developed so gradually that he had failed to notice, until it was simply a part of his day.

Harry realised now that her desk was the first he glanced towards when he arrived, and the last he looked towards on his way out. Why was that? Apart from the fact that she was usually there... first in, and last out, that was Ruth. He guessed that was why she had noticed him pacing.

Harry polished off his first glass of wine and immediately poured another before retiring to his sitting room. His mind was certainly not the uncluttered blank he usually cultivated of an evening. Sinking into his favourite chair, Harry pinched his thumb and forefinger to the bridge of his nose.

"Enough," he told himself, firmly. "Enough."

But when he went to bed that night, he dreamed of her face, and woke smiling.

[END]


End file.
